Questions in interpersonal conflict: Participant and observer perceptions

Abstract

Questions implying varying degrees of openness in interpersonal conflict interaction were examined from participant and observer perspectives. It was predicted that observers’ judgments of affect intensity would account for more variation in types of questions than would participants’ judgments of affect intensity. Videotapes of 37 dyadic conflict interactions were coded. The results indicate that one observer was a better predictor of questions than was the other observer and that participants were not successful predictors of any type of question occurring during conflict. In spite of the obtained observer differences, some evidence was yielded suggesting these observer differences might be greater than one would generally expect. These results, thus, lend support to previous conflict research utilizing the observer perspective and imply that future research examining overt behavior during conflict might best employ the observer rather than the participant perspective.